Tonight for dinner I ate a steak with brussels sprouts and beets. Brussels sprouts and beets, with dandelion tea to drink! (Look, Ma, I’m becoming one of those annoying healthy people on the internet.) This afternoon I even ate a mango with breakfast. But seriously, what has happened to me, stepping out of my food comfort zone? Usually my vegetables are limited to zucchini, squash, and spinach–that’s it. I like my fruits to be apples, bananas, peaches, pears, or pineapples, or I don’t like them at all. Honestly, it’d be the same if I were going out for tacos–I’m a creature of habit–I find something that works and stick with it.

As for why I’m branching out at mealtime, I’ve been on the world-wide web again. Lately I’ve been reading a lot about how you should “eat the rainbow.” Personally, I think this is one of the gayest expressions I’ve ever heard (and therefore we should keep it). But seriously, I love the way it reminds me to fill my plate with colorful food. Fried chicken is not a color, Marcus. Well, usually when I take to a new idea, I jump overboard and go one hundred percent. I’m going to buy fifty-four new vegetables and sixteen new fruits. I’m going to eat the rainbow–in one meal! But the last time I went to the store I told myself it was okay to start small–one new fruit, one new vegetable, one new canned vegetable. Baby steps.

Now that I’ve tried all these new food items, I can’t say that my life has dramatically changed. I feel pretty much like I’ve felt for the last week–sort of tired, not awful. So I’ve been trying to convince myself that I really am in this for the long haul, that eating right is something that benefits a person over time, not over an afternoon. I’ve been trying to apply this thinking to my chi kung practice too. So far I’ve been at it every day for twelve days, and I really have to fight the tendency to throw in the towel because this still hurts or that’s still a problem. I blame America for this mentality. Everything here is drive-thru restaurants, two-day shipping, and on-demand movies. I want healing now.

Of course, our bodies aren’t on-demand. Health problems and the number on the scale take time to develop, take time to go away. I’m trying to remember this. Once I read that the secret to success was simply doing more of a right action. In other words, if you consider eating a healthy meal to be a good thing–do more of that. Earlier today I saw a picture of me taken a couple months ago, and the first thing I thought was, Oh wow, I’ve lost weight in my face. So whereas I have a tendency to think that nothing I do ever works, my body has obviously responded to the right actions I’ve been taking for the last month. So maybe I just need to keep it up. As the saying goes, all things in good time.

This afternoon I finished reading Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, one of the best fiction books I’ve read in a while. Then I started a non-fiction book about intuition called Second Sight by Judith Orloff. Currently I’m a little less than halfway done, and all I can think about is finishing so I can get to the six other books I’ve already started but haven’t finished. I do this a lot–think about all the books I want to read but don’t have time to. I look at the dozens and dozens of titles on my Amazon wish lists and just assume my life would be better if I had all that knowledge. Since there’s always more to learn, this thinking is exhausting. So I’m trying to remind myself to simply do the best I can each day–read what I can read–and give myself a damn break.

Tonight I repaired a light fixture in my parents’ bedroom. A few weeks ago it shorted out, and I just got the replacement part I needed a couple days ago. So I was almost done. I’d already installed the new part, attached the wires, fastened the fixture to the ceiling, and put the bulbs back in. All I had to do was put the glass globe on the bottom. If you’ve ever done this sort of thing, you know nothing is ever easy, and I hit a snag when the new part I installed didn’t have a screw long enough to hold the globe on. (Don’t you hate it when a screw isn’t long enough?) Well, the next thing I knew, I was fishing through the trashcan for the old part, so I could take the long screw from it and use it to hold the globe on. Of course, the bracket holding the screw was welded on, so I ended up making a mess.

But the good news is that it worked. It just took longer than I thought.

I guess most things take longer than we think–losing weight, feeling better, reading a book. Just now I got distracted and watched a bunch of videos about intuition (it’s a theme lately), so now this blog is taking longer than I thought. Maybe we all get distracted, or maybe life isn’t meant to be lived in a straight line. Once my therapist said, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” I think I rolled my eyes; it was just more “inspirational poster” than I could handle at the moment. But when I consider this blog, for example, it really isn’t where I’m going on the outside–365 days of straight blogging–it’s where I’m going on the inside. That’s the journey the therapist was talking about, the one that transforms you. Of course, this journey, like the physical body, refuses to be rushed, is the result of taking one right action after another, and is worth every baby step along the way.